Is Trustpilot Legit? How Its Reviews Are Checked and Labeled

Yes, Trustpilot is legit. It’s a real, open review platform, run by a company listed on the London Stock Exchange. It screens every review with automated fake-review detection before publishing it, and it says businesses can’t pay to have reviews removed. It isn’t perfect: anyone with a genuine experience can review without being invited, so some fake reviews still get through. Treat a Trustpilot profile as useful evidence to weigh, not proof.

This guide covers how Trustpilot says it checks reviews, the figures it publishes, what paid plans do and don’t change, the rules businesses must follow, and how to judge whether the reviews on a particular profile are trustworthy. Everything about Trustpilot here comes from its own Trust Center, Trust Report and published guidelines, checked in September 2026.

Is Trustpilot a legit company?

Trustpilot is an established business, not a scam site. Its own pages describe it as an open platform: consumers can read and write reviews free of charge, and any business can claim its profile and reply to reviews at no cost. Trustpilot says it’s a publicly listed company on the London Stock Exchange, so its finances are open to scrutiny.

The more useful question is whether you can trust the reviews on it. That depends on how Trustpilot screens them, how businesses collect them, and how carefully you read a profile. The rest of this guide takes each in turn.

How Trustpilot checks reviews

Trustpilot describes a “journey of a review” on its Trust Center page:

1. The reviewer creates an account. Every review is linked to a user profile, and reviewers agree to Trustpilot’s terms and guidelines. Reviewers may use a username that isn’t their real name.
2. The review is written. It can be invited by a business or written unprompted. Either way, it must be about a genuine experience.
3. Automated systems assess it. Trustpilot says every submitted review is checked against “millions of data points” for signs it’s fake and for breaches of its guidelines. It says its systems look at behavior as well as content, including IP addresses, device characteristics, location data and timestamps. If a review looks suspicious or breaks the rules, it doesn’t appear.
4. The review is published. If it passes, it goes live.
5. Anyone can flag it later. Consumers and businesses can flag reviews they think break the guidelines. Trustpilot’s Content Integrity and Fraud and Investigations teams handle escalations.

Trustpilot is candid that this isn’t flawless. Its Action We Take policy says its detection systems are improving but “we may not get it right 100% of the time”, and reviewers can challenge a removal.

Are Trustpilot reviews fake? What Trustpilot’s own figures show

Trustpilot’s own figures suggest most submitted reviews pass its checks, but fake reviews are attempted at scale, and Trustpilot publishes how many it catches. These are its own figures, not independent audits:

Figure	Source
7.8 million reviews detected as fake and removed in 2025	Trustpilot Trust Center, as of September 2026
4.5 million fake reviews removed in 2024	Trustpilot Trust Report 2025
7.4% of reviews submitted in 2024 were removed as fake, up from 6.1% in 2023	Trustpilot Trust Report 2025
90% of the fake reviews removed in 2024 were caught automatically; the rest came from user flags or manual investigations	Trustpilot Trust Report 2025

Two points from the Trust Report are worth knowing. First, Trustpilot says the “vast majority” of fake reviews it removes are positive. The main risk isn’t fake complaints: it’s businesses inflating their own score. Second, Trustpilot presents the rising removal rate as a sign that its detection is improving. That’s plausible, but it also means some fakes will slip through.

Trustpilot also publishes a separate transparency report under the EU’s Digital Services Act, linked from its site footer. We haven’t used its figures here.

Can businesses pay Trustpilot to remove bad reviews?

No, according to Trustpilot. Its Trust Center says businesses “can never pay to remove reviews”, and its “How Trustpilot works” page says “nobody can pay to get reviews removed”. Its reviewer guidelines say businesses have no control over review removal “whether or not they pay for our services”.

What a paid plan does buy, Trustpilot says, is software: more and better-integrated review invitations, licensed use of Trustpilot’s stars and widgets in marketing, and analytics. Every business, paying or not, gets a free profile, can reply to reviews and gets 50 automated review invitations a month. Trustpilot’s plans and prices change, so check its own site for current pricing. Our guide to Trustpilot pricing covers the paid plans and their contract terms, and Trustpilot for business explains how the free and paid tools work.

Paid plans can still affect a score indirectly. Businesses that invite more customers often collect more positive reviews, because Trustpilot notes that the least happy customers are often the most motivated to write unprompted. Trustpilot says invited reviews go through the same fraud detection and moderation as any other, and that its rules prohibit cherry-picking who gets invited.

The rules businesses must follow

Trustpilot’s Guidelines for Businesses (June 2026 version) set out what’s allowed when collecting reviews. Businesses should:

• Invite fairly and consistently. Invite everyone in the same way and at the same point in the customer journey, whether their experience was good or bad. Send one invite per experience.
• Use neutral wording. No suggestion that customers should leave five stars.
• Offer no incentives. Trustpilot’s list includes discounts, promo codes, prize draw entries, refunds and freebies.
• Not be selective. That rules out inviting only happy customers and timing invitations so only satisfied customers reach them. It also rules out pre-screening: sending happy customers to Trustpilot and unhappy ones to a private channel.
• Not invite people with a special relationship to the business, such as close family, staff or shareholders.

The guidelines also answer a common complaint from businesses: “I don’t recognize this reviewer.” Trustpilot says a review can be genuine even so, because reviewers don’t need to be invited, genuine experiences aren’t limited to purchases, and reviewers can use a username. For reviewers, an experience can include a phone call, an email, an online chat or a store visit, typically within the last 12 months.

These rules line up with wider law. In the US, the FTC’s 2024 rule on consumer reviews bans fake reviews, bought reviews and incentives conditioned on positive sentiment. Our guide to the FTC fake review rule explains it.

Labels and warnings to look for

Trustpilot uses a few public signals that help you judge a profile:

• Whether the profile is claimed. Any business can claim its free profile to manage it and reply to reviews. That tells you the business is engaged with the page, but on its own it says nothing about the quality of the reviews.
• Consumer Warning. Trustpilot places a prominent warning on a profile when a business keeps misusing the platform, for example with fake reviews, after earlier warnings. While it’s active, the TrustScore is hidden, and the Trust Report says the profile is closed to new reviews. Trustpilot’s policy says a warning usually stays about six months.
• Consumer Alert. Used when Trustpilot thinks you should know something, such as a business in a high-risk industry or one under regulator investigation. Trustpilot says an alert “does not necessarily mean the business has engaged in misuse”.
• How the business uses the platform. Trustpilot says it shows on each profile how the business interacts with Trustpilot, such as how many reviews it flags and which invitation methods it uses.

The TrustScore itself is based on the number of reviews and how recent they are. Trustpilot also adds a weighting equal to seven reviews at 3.5 stars, so businesses with few reviews start from a balanced score.

How to read a Trustpilot profile well

1. Look at the count and spread, not just the score. A 4.8 from 20 reviews tells you far less than a 4.2 from 5,000.
2. Check the dates. A sudden burst of five-star reviews in one week is worth a closer look. So is a profile with no recent reviews.
3. Read the negative reviews. Are the complaints about the same thing, such as refunds, delivery or customer service? Does the business reply with specifics?
4. Look for detail. Genuine reviews tend to mention what was bought, what went wrong and what happened next. Very short, generic praise is weaker evidence.
5. Cross-check. Compare Trustpilot with Google reviews, the Better Business Bureau and your card issuer’s dispute protections. Our guide to Trustpilot vs Google reviews explains how the two platforms differ.

A worked example

This is an illustrative scenario, not a real client.

Jordan wants to buy a refurbished laptop from an online store he hasn’t heard of. Its Trustpilot score is 4.6 from about 900 reviews.

1. He sorts by most recent and sees steady reviews over two years, not a sudden spike.
2. He reads the one-star reviews: most mention slow refunds, and the store replies to each with an order update.
3. He checks for a Consumer Warning or Alert and finds none.
4. He compares Google reviews, which tell a similar story.
5. He decides to buy, pays by credit card for the extra protection, and keeps the order confirmation in case he needs to write a review or dispute a charge later.

Common mistakes

• Trusting the score alone. A high TrustScore with few or very recent reviews is weak evidence.
• Assuming every negative review is fake. Businesses sometimes say this, but Trustpilot says a review can be genuine even if the business doesn’t recognize the reviewer.
• Assuming paying customers get special treatment. Trustpilot says the same rules and detection apply to all businesses.
• For businesses: gating or rewarding reviews. Inviting only happy customers or offering a discount for a review breaks Trustpilot’s guidelines and can lead to warnings, a public Consumer Warning and, for paying customers, contract termination.

If you’re a business on Trustpilot

If a review on your profile breaks Trustpilot’s guidelines, you can flag it, and Trustpilot will assess it. If it’s genuine but unfair, a calm public reply usually does more than a removal attempt. Our guide on how to remove Trustpilot reviews covers what qualifies and how to flag it, and our Trustpilot review management service can help if you’d rather hand it off. It sits within our wider review management service, which covers Google and other platforms too.

Our free 123 Reputation Management platform can also help you keep track. It tags every page-one search result for your name as positive, neutral or negative. It watches for new reviews and mentions and alerts you when one needs a reply. It tracks your results as your owned pages climb and sends plain-English monthly reports.

If you’re weighing other platforms, see our comparisons of Feefo vs Trustpilot and our list of Trustpilot alternatives.

Frequently asked questions

Is Trustpilot legit or a scam?

Trustpilot is a legitimate, publicly listed review platform. Consumers use it for free, and every review is screened by automated fake-review detection before it’s published. Some fake reviews still get through, so read a profile carefully rather than relying on the score alone.

Are Trustpilot reviews fake?

Most aren’t, but some are. Trustpilot says it removed 7.8 million reviews it detected as fake in 2025, and its 2025 Trust Report says 7.4% of reviews submitted in 2024 were removed as fake. It says most of the fake reviews it removes are positive, which means inflated scores are the bigger risk.

Can companies pay Trustpilot to delete bad reviews?

No. Trustpilot says businesses can never pay to remove reviews, whether or not they subscribe. Any business can flag a review it believes breaks the guidelines, and Trustpilot decides whether it stays up.

Do you have to be invited to review on Trustpilot?

No. Trustpilot’s guidelines say anyone over 18 with a recent, genuine experience can write a review, with or without an invitation. The experience doesn’t have to be a purchase.

Can a business offer a discount for a Trustpilot review?

No. Trustpilot’s guidelines ban incentives in connection with writing or editing reviews, including discounts, promo codes, prize draw entries, refunds and freebies.